The short one: If you expect a total mayhem like it was in DOOM - you'll be disappointed If you want to experience survival horror like it was in Dead Space - you'll be disappointed. If you're not that easily discouraged by tedious wandering through a futuristic maze of tight corridors, looking for that one right button to push or a piece of equipment without which you can't progress to the next level, and you enjoyed Prey (2017) - I personally think you'll love this one. And now the long one (because this game deserves it): You must be warned before you play... there is a lot of backtracking here. Generally I like backtracking and it is very typical for a game from 90-s but the level design makes it frustrating as hell. In some review below this one, a player has given up on Executive level, and I'm not surprised because it was designed in a really bad way (although environment in that level is more appealing). You'll be forced to crawl through the same ventilation shaft over and over again to CPU, a lever... going back to another lever... and than returning to each level again in order to find a piece of information on how to disable a piece of equipment... and then returning through the same shaft just because no one gave you that information before. I can't blame Nightdive for this because that was the original design but I still think it could have been improved. Somewhere at the end of Executive I thought about letting this go too, and yet something kept me going. It's because overall this game is really good and absorbing. I loved the pixel-art aesthetics of textures. Even though they wanted to make it feel more retro (in which they succeeded) this game still looks gorgeaous and has a lot of nice little details, a wide variety of weapons and enemies. There was a lot of heart put into this and you can see it. One more thing: If your performance suffers from stuttering, look for System Shock Shader Compilation on forums and on youtube. This can be fixed.
I promised myself I would never play this again... and I broke that promise. I was absorbed into this fantastic world and totally lost my hour count. This game never gets old. The mechanics are very simple. Gaining experience and upgrading your units is fun, and difficulty level is very well balanced. Undead campaign is very challenging - especially the third mission. To anyone experiencing problems when launching or with crashes... Setting compatibility to Windows Xp (Service Pack 3) solved problems in my case. Win 95 or 98 should do the trick too but there may be some problems with sound.
When you get to the finish... you watch the last sequence and the credits are long gone and you're still sitting in front of your monitor having no idea what to do with yourself for the rest of the day... You just know they've nailed it.
If you like classics like Duke Nukem, Serious Sam, or even Half Life, this is definitely for you. Old school gameplay with a comic graphics that adds a unique charm to the experience. Lots of nice guns, lots of enemies and very intuitive skill set. It's hard to point some weak spots... perhaps saving progress might be off-putting for some of you. Others shall find a method in this madness, especially after beating the game.
If you don't expect complex game mechanics, and you only want to experience a one time film-like adventure - you will not be disappointed. Devs deserve a big round of applause.
... and quite frankly it is really shame because I liked the story. I liked the Protagonist and characters you can interact with (which makes it more difficult to play as a bad guy) I really loved the graphics, the atmosphere and the soundtrack. The NPC system where you gather clues and improve the level of blood is a very nice touch. Had no problems with UI. Everything is very clear and smooth. The thing that really overwhelmed me is annoying repetetive fighting against the same enemies over and over again combined with completely broken paths in the city with lots of irritating dead ends or closed gates (which makes it impossible to avoid fight in certain situations), lack of minimap, totally illegible map from the inventory menu, broken XP system, too many piles of junk to gather, broken shooting (character shoots where he runs, not where you point your camera). Loading screens are just too long... which is really painful when you keep dying while struggling with some lot on a route to the next checkpoint. The fighting itself can make your blood boil. Some enemies are OP and can kill you with a single critical hit. I ended my unpleasant adventure at the end of Chapter IV. Some crashes (with Unreal Engine logs) made me finally uninstal it and never look back. It was just too much to bare. I think this game had a great potential, but it should have been designed in a different way - something similar to Deus Ex or Dishonored series where you had this possibility to avoid fighting and solving all the problems by your wits, diplomacy or stealth. Previous Dontnod games were true gems... but this one (sadly) went wrong.
This game is really... really hard to rate. Ultimately it was fun but almost every aspect here is two sides of the same coin. Story is absorbing... but the amount of notes scattered everywhere is just too much :/ Graphics is absolutely stunning. All those effects, reflections, shadows and physics is very nice to watch... but sometimes facial animations look weird, and game stutters when you switch your menus. Another weird thing I experienced was with textures. Apparently when I switch them to highest you can witness they won't load properly after some time of playing. On Medium everything seems fine (tested on DX12, Ryzen 5 2400, Gtx 1060 6GB. Haven't seen RT unfortunately) The game worked really nice with some occasional FPS drops (but rarely) I didn't like the weapon system. I think it's totally broken. Switching between two guns in two available slots is pointless because you still have access to all your guns. This system worked in F.E.A.R. for example because you had to make a decision at some point what kind of guns you'll be carrying. Sometimes there's much more 9mm stocked than 5.56mm or shotgun shells and that made perfect sense. In Control you can change weapons in those slots at any time... so why didn't they just make a "Weapon Circle" like in DOOM. It would make players life a lot easier and the gameplay would be much smoother. Another thing was with crafting Weapon Mods which is also pointless because of the amount of mods you get from defeated enemies. There are literally dozens of them (maybe even hundreds) you can get during your playthrough. Too many types of resources was really unnecessary either. But as I mentioned right next to those four stars above, this is still a very good game and it is worth playing. There are two expansions and they are truly decent.
I'm a big fan of Build Engine games, but somehow I've never known Powerslave and never played it when I was a kid, so this remaster was a perfect thing for me. After beating this game (which took me precisely 10 hours) I must admit this was way ahead of its time. The weapon system, backtracking and collecting special items that give you some abilities was something different from other games at that time. It was mentioned in previous comments that this game had two versions. One linear and one focusing on exploration. It may be frustrating for some players to go back to previous levels and fight the same bunch of monsters before reaching earlier unaccessible section of the map... but for others (like me) it has some charm. I just hope Nightdive considers remastering Redneck Rampage at some time.
... or at least remake or remaster (but it still looks nice) Practically everything is perfect here. Loved the shooting, loved the story, spells, weapons... and Scythe of the Celts ;)
This is what comes first when I think of it. I loved the graphics and all the visuals. Soundtrack is really good, gameplay is a lot of fun (nice RPG elements) and story is quite long (took me 50 hours - explored everything) When it comes to mechanics I enjoyed all the puzzles because these were quite challenging. The only thing that perhaps could be improved is dificulty overall - it is little imbalanced. However I didn't beat the game on Hard so I can't tell. In general - it was worth it.
